The dunes of the Sossusvlei tower hundreds of feet above claypans in Namib-Naukluft Park. The Sossusvlei's name, a combination of Afrikaans and the native Nama words meaning "dead-end marsh," derives from its having no natural outfall for rains.

A brown hyena carries off a dead fur seal pup in Sperrgebiet National Park, as a jackal looks on. These reclusive hyenas, numbering fewer than 1,200 in Namibia and 8,000 Africa-wide, have rarely been photographed. Proclaimed in 2008, the park—whose name means "forbidden area" in German—corresponds to a diamond-mining lease long off-limits to the public.

Cape fur seals bask at Cape Cross, a rocky point on the Skeleton Coast named for a stone cross erected by Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1486. More than 200,000 seals—Namibia's largest breeding colony—begin gathering here each October to mate.

Pink flamingos mass on the water in Sandwich Harbour. Once a secluded anchorage for whalers, this desolate lagoon in Namib-Naukluft Park is now renowned for its birdlife, with more than a hundred species recorded.

Desert-dwelling elephants follow the contours of the ancient Huab River Valley, wending through the timeless landscapes of the Torra Conservancy, one of some 60 such areas overseen by local communities.

A survival strategy of the golden mole in Sperrgebiet National Park is to "swim" just below the surface of the sand. Despite its seeming barrenness, this coastal region is a biodiversity hot spot, home to reptiles, antelope, Cape fur seals, rare brown hyenas—and some 800 plant species, 234 of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

A waddle of African penguins shelters in a deserted hut on Halifax Island, part of a marine sanctuary off Sperrgebiet National Park. By the 1900s traders had stripped the guano penguins hid their eggs in, and the birds have had to lay them on bare ground, exposed to scavengers. Fewer than 30,000 breeding pairs now exist in the world.

Over thousands of years winds have sculpted sand in the Namib Desert into some of the world's tallest dunes, colored red by iron oxide. The sand contains just enough moisture to sustain a few hardy plants. Not far from this dune, one called Big Daddy looms 1,200 feet above the desert floor.

A herd of springbok bounds across Sperrgebiet National Park, 5.4 million newly protected acres on Namibia's southwest coast. Superbly adapted for the harsh desert environment, springbok have increased their number to some 160,000 since the 1980s—one of several species recovering from historic lows.